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Monday, January 27, 2003

By Pohla Smith, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Thanks to a couple of wrestling parents, a determined teacher, two foundations and a former Steelers player, Allderdice High School students now have a state-of-the-art fitness center in which to work out.

	Tenth-grader Jesse Ennis does curl-ups while circuit training with other members of the Allderdice High School wrestling team in the school's new fitness center. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

Body Masters, a fitness machine manufacturer, and the University of Pittsburgh also have gotten involved in the $110,000, two-phase project, which includes providing fitness equipment and a program for assessing and tracking each student's fitness level.

Though students, faculty and Allderdice sports teams have been using the facility since late fall, it will be officially opened tomorrow with a 7 p.m. ceremony.

The first phase of the project includes a room of aerobic exercise machines such as recumbent bikes, a treadmill, an aerobic stepper and ellipticals, and a weight room packed with Body Masters weightlifting machines.

Next report card period, the second phase of the project gets under way. Come summer, the fitness center also could be opened to the community. Details for community use have not been finalized.

The wrestling parents who helped make this project a reality are Chuck Perlow, whose son has since transferred to an out-of-state private school, and Jeff Rosenthal, whose son is wrestling team captain. The teacher/coach is Don Nania, a longtime physical education-health instructor who also serves as Allderdice's head wrestling coach and assistant coach of baseball and girls' soccer.

The charitable groups are the Jewish Health Care Foundation and the Charles Morris Foundation, with which Perlow is involved. The former Steeler is Robin Cole, national sales director for Body Masters.

Athletic Training Network, of which former Steeler Tunch Ilkin is vice president and former Baltimore Colt Leo Wisniewski is CEO, also is involved. The firm donated self-assessment software.

The project began about two years ago with a conversation between Perlow and Nania.

"[Perlow] said he had noticed that the teams from the [Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League] carried a lot more muscle than our kids," Nania said. "I said it was their training facilities."

Pittsburgh Public Schools had paid to renovate Allderdice's physical education facilities, gymnasium and training area in 1985, but the free weight room had become antiquated in terms of what is available today.

"Kids spent too much time stacking weights, and it was intimidating to some kids, like the little kids. We wanted to facilitate working out for the underachiever," Nania said.

The coach said he had asked the school district for the funds to build the kind of fitness center he and other coaches and teachers dreamed of and which other city high schools already have. But because still other city high schools do not have facilities even as good as Allderdice's old ones, Nania said he was told he'd have to find a way to generate the necessary money himself.

Perlow told Nania he might be able to help him through foundations. But first, he said, Nania would have to develop a proposal that included a curriculum, cost assessment and blueprint. He also said Nania had to "prove it's student-based and not just for jocks."

Rosenthal then took on the role of middleman between Nania and Perlow, who is frequently out of town.

Through Cole, Nania got Body Masters' people to design the area and a cost assessment. The sum was $110,000. The two foundations donated a combined $75,000.